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FRUITFROMWASHINGTON.COM WEB-LETTER
May-June, 2005
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FRUITFROMWASHINGTON.COM WEB-LETTER
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Artist
finds plein aire, and plenty of it, in scenic Kittitas Valley, Washington.
A
portable easel, pad, paintbox and the open air (not to mention artistic
savoir faire) are the ingredients for capturing swiftly changing color,
light and mood outdoors.
Ruth
Hulbert did just that (even without the benefit of an easel) during her
Thanksgiving visit to lifelong friends' (Ben and Michael) grandparents'
home near Ellensburg, Washington. Grandpa Dee is in the habit of taking a walk nearly every day, the half mile down and back up the hill on Vanderbilt Road. Grandma Barbara usually accompanies him although if she gets preoccupied with secretarial chores, he goes alone. Their outing rarely offers surprises but one day in March was an exception when Grandpa Dee spotted one peahen plus two peacocks displaying their plumes, perched in the poplar row along the orchard's edge. Pheasants, quail, doves, kestrels, hawks, blackbirds, robins, juncos, chickadees and their like are more familiar sights than members of the family Phasianidae. While peafowl are distant relatives of pheasants, they are native to Congo and countries in the Far East including India, Burma, Java, Ceylon and Malaya. Thus this group appeared to be a very long way from home. Of course they weren't. They belonged to a family that recently moved into the neighborhood. Such sights will likely become quite common as the demographics change but for now the locals are having difficulty believing their eyes. More about the care and keep of peafowl. When it's time to tend the roses, a scene from The Quiet Man comes to mind. In the movie, Mrs. Playfair surveys the rose plantings at White O'Morn and suggests to the American, Sean Thornton, horse manure is best for fertilizing the roses. So right she is. We believe there is truth in the cautionary (albeit anecdotal) tale of the smart, young, college graduate hired as a new park manager who takes over the care and upkeep of the public rose gardens and switches from horse manure to a chemical product with disastrous results. Lo, how a rose 'ere blooming? Not swell without loads of horse manure (often available free for the asking, you haul, from a local horse farm or stable). Find advice about tending lawns, gardens, flowers, trees and shrubs at www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/horticulture.htm.
Mrs.
Playfair: Well, Mr. Thornton, you are a wonder. It looks the way all Irish
cottages should and so seldom do. And only an American would have thought
of emerald green. Roses love water and during times of drought a rose garden may be a very poor choice for landscaping your yard. You might want to rethink your plan to include low water, drought tolerant plants. Xeriscape is the term you'll need to become familiar with when irrigation water is in short supply. North Dakota State University Extension Service provides a guide ttitled, "Xeriscape Plant Selections and Ideas" H-957 (Revised), December 1994 by Ronald C. Smith, Horticulturist, and Rose Larson, Landscape Architect. It identifies low water demand plants which do well in the mid-west states. However, the recommended list may not include plants suited to your particular area. It's a good idea to check with your local extension office or master gardener for the best choices for your locale. The FruitFromWashington.com webletter may appear to be potluck. However, we actually do consider quite carefully what to place before you. For instance, the following excerpted Chapter XI - The Country Doctor from Adventures In Contentment by David Grayson (aka Ray Stannard) illustrates three subjects of pertinence today. The first is the depiction of the funeral of a soldier and veteran of war. Such funerals may have taken place in your own community recently. We have seen them where we live. Some are high profile media events with the Governor of the State attending. Some not. Rarely are they written up in narrative form which offers insight and truth. Grayson's depiction does. The second subject of note in this work is that it tells the tale of a man who salvaged his life when it was on the brink of ruin from drink. If you're rolling your eyes and thinking here comes the AA gospel, don't worry. We've no such speech in store, but again, willpower and strength to effect a change are subjects worthy of contemplation. The third is cultivating the ability to differentiate between what's true and what's false; for instance embracing true sentiment and rejecting sentimentality; understanding the difference between real patriotism, "the patriotism of duty done in the small concerns of life" and its antithesis, Patriotic Showboating. Not to turn too political here, that is definitely worthy of everyone's notice and thoughtful attention. XI - THE COUNTRY DOCTOR (David Grayson's Adventures in Contentment) Sunday afternoon, June 9. We had a funeral to-day in this community and the longest funeral procession, Charles Baxter says, he has seen in all the years of his memory among these hills. A good man has gone away--and yet remains. In the comparatively short time I have been here I never came to know him well personally, though I saw him often in the country roads, a ruddy old gentleman with thick, coarse, iron-gray hair, somewhat stern of countenance, somewhat shabby of attire, sitting as erect as a trooper in his open buggy, one muscular hand resting on his knee, the other holding the reins of his familiar old white horse. I said I did not come to know him well personally, and yet no one who knows this community can help knowing Doctor John North. I never so desired the gift of moving expression as I do at this moment, on my return from his funeral, that I may give some faint idea of what a good man means to a community like ours--as the more complete knowledge of it has come to me to-day.... I never fully realised until this morning what a supreme triumph it is, having grown old, to merit the respect of those who know us best. Mere greatness offers no reward to compare with it, for greatness compels that homage which we freely bestow upon goodness. So long as I live I shall never forget this morning. I stood in the door-yard outside of the open window of the old doctor's home. It was soft, and warm, and very still--a June Sunday morning. An apple tree not far off was still in blossom, and across the road on a grassy hillside sheep fed unconcernedly. Occasionally, from the roadway where the horses of the countryside were waiting, I heard the clink of a bit-ring or the low voice of some new-comer seeking a place to hitch. Not half those who came could find room in the house: they stood uncovered among the trees. From within, wafted through the window, came the faint odour of flowers, and the occasional minor intonation of someone speaking--and finally our own Scotch Preacher! I could not see him, but there lay in the cadences of his voice a peculiar note of peacefulness, of finality. The day before he died Dr. North had said: "I want McAlway to conduct my funeral, not as a minister but as a man. He has been my friend for forty years; he will know what I mean."... In the hours which followed, on the pleasant winding way to the cemetery, in the groups under the trees, on the way homeward again, the community spoke its true heart, and I have come back with the feeling that human nature, at bottom, is sound and sweet. I knew a great deal before about Doctor North, but I knew it as knowledge, not as emotion, and therefore it was not really a part of my life... ...Indeed, he assumed that the responsibility for the health of the community rested upon him. He was a sort of self-constituted health officer. He was always sniffing about for old wells and damp cellars--and somehow, with his crisp humour and sound sense, getting them cleaned. In his old age he even grew querulously particular about these things--asking a little more of human nature than it could quite accomplish. There were innumerable other ways--how they came out to-day all glorified now that he is gone!--in which he served the community. Horace tells how he once met the Doctor driving his old white horse in the town road. "Horace," called the Doctor, "why don't you paint your barn?" "Well," said Horace, "it is beginning to look a bit shabby." "Horace," said the Doctor, "you're a prominent citizen. We look to you to keep up the credit of the neighbourhood." Horace painted his barn. I think Doctor North was fonder of Charles Baxter than of anyone else, save his sister. He hated sham and cant: if a man had a single "reality" in him the old Doctor found it; and Charles Baxter in many ways exceeds any man I ever knew in the downright quality of genuineness. The Doctor was never tired of telling--and with humour--how he once went to Baxter to have a table made for his office. When he came to get it he found the table upside down and Baxter on his knees finishing off the under part of the drawer slides. Baxter looked up and smiled in the engaging way he has, and continued his work. After watching him for some time the Doctor said: "Baxter, why do you spend so much time on that table? Who's going to know whether or not the last touch has been put on the under side of it?" Baxter straightened up and looked at the Doctor in surprise. "Why, I will," he said. How the Doctor loved to tell that story! I warrant there is no boy who ever grew up in this country who hasn't heard it. It was a part of his pride in finding reality that made the Doctor such a lover of true sentiment and such a hater of sentimentality. I prize one memory of him which illustrates this point. The district school gave a "speaking" and we all went. One boy with a fresh young voice spoke a "soldier piece"--the soliloquy of a one-armed veteran who sits at a window and sees the troops go by with dancing banners and glittering bayonets, and the people cheering and shouting. And the refrain went something like this: "Never
again call 'Comrade' I happened to look around while the boy was speaking, and there sat the old Doctor with the tears rolling unheeded down his ruddy face; he was thinking, no doubt, of his war time and the comrades he knew. On the other hand, how he despised fustian and bombast. His "Bah!" delivered explosively, was often like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. Several years ago, before I came here--and it is one of the historic stories of the county--there was a semi-political Fourth of July celebration with a number of ambitious orators. One of them, a young fellow of small worth who wanted to be elected to the legislature, made an impassioned address on "Patriotism." The Doctor was present, for he liked gatherings: he liked people. But he did not like the young orator, and did not want him to be elected. In the midst of the speech, while the audience was being carried through the clouds of oratory, the Doctor was seen to be growing more and more uneasy. Finally he burst out: "Bah!" The orator caught himself, and then swept on again. "Bah!" said the Doctor. By this time the audience was really interested. The orator stopped. He knew the Doctor, and he should have known better than to say what he did. But he was very young and he knew the Doctor was opposing him. "Perhaps," he remarked sarcastically, "the Doctor can make a better speech than I can." The Doctor rose instantly, to his full height--and he was an impressive-looking man. "Perhaps," he said, "I can, and what is more, I will." He stood up on a chair and gave them a talk on Patriotism--real patriotism--the patriotism of duty done in the small concerns of life. That speech, which ended the political career of the orator, is not forgotten to-day. One thing I heard to-day about the old Doctor impressed me deeply. I have been thinking about it ever since: it illuminates his character more than anything I have heard. It is singular, too, that I should not have known the story before. I don't believe it was because it all happened so long ago; it rather remained untold out of deference to a sort of neighbourhood delicacy. I had, indeed, wondered why a man of such capacities, so many qualities of real greatness and power, should have escaped a city career. I said something to this effect to a group of men with whom I was talking this morning. I thought they exchanged glances; one said: "When he first came out of the army he'd made such a fine record as a surgeon that everyone-urged him to go to the city and practice----" A pause followed which no one seemed inclined to fill. "But he didn't go," I said. "No, he didn't go. He was a brilliant young fellow. He knew a lot, and he was popular, too. He'd have had a great success----" Another pause. "But he didn't go?" I asked promptingly. "No; he staid here. He was better educated than any man in this county. Why, I've seen him more'n once pick up a book of Latin and read it for pleasure." I could see that all this was purposely irrelevant, and I liked them for it. But walking home from the cemetery Horace gave me the story; the community knew it to the last detail. I suppose it is a story not uncommon among men, but this morning, told of the old Doctor we had just laid away, it struck me with a tragic poignancy difficult to describe. "Yes," said Horace, "he was to have been married, forty years ago, and the match was broken off because he was a drunkard." "A drunkard!" I exclaimed, with a shock I cannot convey. "Yes, sir," said Horace, "one o' the worst you ever see. He got it in the army. Handsome, wild, brilliant--that was the Doctor. I was a little boy but I remember it mighty well." He told me the whole distressing story. It was all a long time ago and the details do not matter now. It was to be expected that a man like the old Doctor should love, love once, and love as few men do. And that is what he did--and the girl left him because he was a drunkard! "They all thought," said Horace, "that he'd up an' kill himself. He said he would, but he didn't. Instid o' that he put an open bottle on his table and he looked at it and said: 'Which is stronger, now, you or John North? We'll make that the test,' he said, 'we'll live or die by that.' Them was his exact words. He couldn't sleep nights and he got haggard like a sick man, but he left the bottle there and never touched it." How my heart throbbed with the thought of that old silent struggle! How much it explained; how near it brought all these people around him! It made him so human. It is the tragic necessity (but the salvation) of many a man that he should come finally to an irretrievable experience, to the assurance that everything is lost. For with that moment, if he be strong, he is saved. I wonder if anyone ever attains real human sympathy who has not passed through the fire of some such experience. Or to humour either! For in the best laughter do we not hear constantly that deep minor note which speaks of the ache in the human heart? It seems to me I can understand Doctor North! He died Friday morning. He had been lying very quiet all night; suddenly he opened his eyes and said to his sister: "Good-bye, Kate," and shut them again. That was all. The last call had come and he was ready for it. I looked at his face after death. I saw the iron lines of that old struggle in his mouth and chin; and the humour that it brought him in the lines around his deep-set eyes. ----And as I think of him this afternoon, I can see him--curiously, for I can hardly explain it--carrying a banner as in battle right here among our quiet hills. And those he leads seem to be the people we know, the men, and the women, and the boys! He is the hero of a new age. In olden days he might have been a pioneer, carrying the light of civilisation to a new land; here he has been a sort of moral pioneer--a pioneering far more difficult than any we have ever known. There are no heroics connected with it, the name of the pioneer will not go ringing down the ages; for it is a silent leadership and its success is measured by victories in other lives. We see it now, only too dimly, when he is gone. We reflect sadly that we did not stop to thank him. How busy we were with our own affairs when he was among us! I wonder is there anyone here to take up the banner he has laid down! ----I forgot to say that the Scotch Preacher chose the most impressive text in the Bible for his talk at the funeral: "He that is greatest among you, let him be ... as he that doth serve." And we
came away with a nameless, aching sense of loss, thinking how, perhaps,
in a small way, we might do something for somebody else--as the old Doctor
did. Quick
Click Highlights for Summer |
Spring could not have begun the day better. She is never the spendthrift that summer is, but once in a while she plunges recklessly into her treasure-store and scatters it broadcast. On this last day of April she was prodigal with her sunshine; out countryward she garnished every field and wood and hollow with her best. Everywhere were flowers and pungent herby things in such abundance that even the city folk could sense them afar off. - Ruth Sawyer, The Primrose Ring (1915) Gathering
flowers, leaving bouquets on doorsteps, ringing the bell and running away
is a May Day tradition and one of my very early childhood memories of
when we lived in the city where the proximity of neighbors was quite close.
It's a bit
more difficult to "ring and run" when the neighbors live at
the end of a long, rural lane and dogs bark their heads off whenever a
car or truck draws near. May Day's furtive deliveries require some finesse
in practice. Best to park a ways away, be sure that you know Bowser's
and Fido's name and always, I repeat, always carry a pocketful of biscuits.
Somebody once wrote us to complain about the ridiculous assortment of poetry and prose which we stuff into the FruitFromWashington webletter. She assumed that this publication was used to peddle gift boxes of fruit or maybe even for the sale of redwood furniture that Ross makes for you to use to entertain your friends outdoors during the summer months. So it seemed that the compiled literary bits about birds, bugs and flowers were quite off the mark. We were impressed that she cared enough to point this out, but the fact is, it's more fun to mess about with poetry and prose than it is to do real work (those of you who play computer solitaire or mine sweeper at work should understand what I'm talking about). So until busted by the boss, there will be more long excerpts from archaic written works such as this from In July, an essay by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell about fancying trees, poplars in particular. One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of the green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of maturity, for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and stand in their differences of character and not of mere date. Almost all the green is grave, not sad and not dull. It has a darkened and a daily colour, in majestic but not obvious harmony with dark grey skies, and might look, to inconstant eyes, as prosaic after spring as eleven o’clock looks after the dawn... Not unbeloved is this serious tree, the elm, with its leaf sitting close, unthrilled. Its stature gives it a dark gold head when it looks alone to a late sun. But if one could go by all the woods, across all the old forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, and could walk a county gathering trees of a single kind in the mind, as one walks a garden collecting flowers of a single kind in the hand, would not the harvest be a harvest of poplars? A veritable passion for poplars is a most intelligible passion. The eyes do gather them, far and near, on a whole day’s journey. Not one is unperceived, even though great timber should be passed, and hill-sides dense and deep with trees. The fancy makes a poplar day of it. Immediately the country looks alive with signals; for the poplars everywhere reply to the glance. The woods may be all various, but the poplars are separate. All their many kinds (and aspens, their kin, must be counted with them) shake themselves perpetually free of the motionless forest. It is easy to gather them. Glances sent into the far distance pay them a flash of recognition of their gentle flashes; and as you journey you are suddenly aware of them close by. Light and the breezes are as quick as the eyes of a poplar-lover to find the willing tree that dances to be seen... It is difficult to realize a drought where there are many poplars. And yet their green is not rich; the coolest have a colour much mingled with a cloud-grey. It does but need fresh and simple eyes to recognize their unfaded life. When the other trees grow dark and keep still, the poplar and the aspen do not darken—or hardly—and the deepest summer will not find a day in which they do not keep awake. No waters are so vigilant, even where a lake is bare to the wind. When Keats said of his Dian that she fastened up her hair “with fingers cool as aspen leaves,” he knew the coolest thing in the world. It is a coolness of colour, as well as of a leaf which the breeze takes on both sides—the greenish and the greyish. The poplar green has no glows, no gold; it is an austere colour, as little rich as the colour of willows, and less silvery than theirs. The sun can hardly gild it; but he can shine between. Poplars and aspens let the sun through with the wind. You may have the sky sprinkled through them in high midsummer, when all the woods are close. Sending your fancy poplar-gathering, then, you ensnare wild trees, beating with life. No fisher’s net ever took such glancing fishes, nor did the net of a constellation’s shape ever enclose more vibrating Pleiades. - Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell (1847-1922), In July - The Spirit of Place and Other Essays Compare
poplars in art by Cezanne, Gauguin, Pisarro and Monet. Poplars
by Paul Cezanne (1879-1889, oil on canvas, Musee d'Orsay. More
at The Athenaeum). Also, more Orchard Landscapes and Fruit Still Life Paintings can be found in our Virtual Art Gallery. Moisture from over the Pacific, in the form of rain and snow during late March, was welcomed by growers in Washington and Oregon. Earlier in the month, Gov. Christine Gregoire declared a statewide drought emergency in Washington, based on extremely low snow pack in the mountains and record-low stream flows. While weather systems towards the end of the month improved the odds for above normal springtime precipitation, Mark Svodoba, of the National Drought Mitigation Center reported that as of March 22, "it isn't nearly enough to reverse the fortunes in the region given the persistent warmth and dryness this winter." He continued to warn that "the odds grow long for a last-minute change of heart by Mother Nature. Snow water equivalent readings for most basins in Washington and Oregon along the Cascades are still at or near record lows, and streamflows echo the same story as the peak snowpack date rapidly approaches." How
beautiful is the rain! How it gushes
and struggles out The Northwest is in a serious drought. Washington growers remember other bad years but all signs indicate that this one will be worse. A snappy headline in a news release on Feb. 21, 2005, from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory points to the underlying cause: We're here, We're Warming, Can We Get Used to It? The news story's kicker line runs: "El Niño's effects on a Pacific Northwest river valley offer forecasters a window to dry years ahead". Thanks to Wren Carr for bringing this research lab document to our attention. Read the entire release at www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=71. Background on the source--the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is self described as "a DOE Office of Science laboratory that solves complex problems in energy, national security, the environment and life sciences by advancing the understanding of physics, chemistry, biology and computation." For more information about mitigating drought see www.drought.unl.edu/mitigate/mitigate.htm and this source page on Defending Against Drought. Down
to the Puritan marrow of my bones I
love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
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The
doorbell probably will not work so you will have to knock smartly on the
door, which is an action guaranteed to set the dogs, previously lulled
to tail wagging compliance by handfuls of biscuits, off again as if by
knocking you have become a complete stranger to them. Sprinting away at
this point, with riled dogs at your heels, is for the adventurous few.
We recommend tall sturdy boots and iron-of-steel denim pants. Shorts clad
legs and below ankle shoes are out of the question. The
May Day tradition along the back roads and byways is clearly not for the
faint of heart. No wonder it is more suited for townsfolk. If you think
your neighbors are paranoid and armed, it is best to phone ahead and tell
them you're coming with flowers. They'll probably wonder why.
